The Idea of Progress by J.B. Bury

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Dame, possessed little value in his eyes compared with a road, abridge, or a canal.

Like most of his distinguished contemporaries he was a Deist. On hisdeathbed he received the usual rites of the Church in the presenceof his household, and then told the priest that he did not believe aword of all that. His real views are transparent in some of hisworks through the conventional disguises in which prudent writers ofthe time were wont to wrap their assaults on orthodoxy. To attackMohammedanism by arguments which are equally applicable toChristianity was a device for propagating rationalism in days whenit was dangerous to propagate it openly. This is what the Abbe didin his Discourse against Mohammedanism. Again, in his PhysicalExplanation of an Apparition he remarks: "To diminish our fanaticalproclivities, it would be useful if the Government were to establishan annual prize, to be awarded by the Academy of Sciences, for thebest explanation, by natural laws, of the extraordinary effects ofimagination, of the prodigies related in Greek and Latin literature,and of the pretended miracles told by Protestants, Schismatics, andMohammedans." The author carefully keeps on the right side of thefence. No Catholic authorities could take exception to this. But nointelligent reader could fail to see that all miracles wereattacked. The miracles accepted by the Protestants were alsobelieved in by the Catholics.

He was one of the remarkable figures of his age. We might almost saythat he was a new type--a nineteenth century humanitarian andpacifist in an eighteenth century environment. He was a bornreformer, and he devoted his life to the construction of schemes forincreasing human happiness. He introduced the word bienfaisance intothe currency of the French language, and beneficence was in his eyesthe sovran virtue. There were few departments of public affairs inwhich he did not point out the deficiencies and devise ingeniousplans for improvement. Most of his numerous writings are projets--schemes of reform in government, economics, finance, education, allworked out in detail, and all aiming at the increase of pleasure andthe diminution of pain. The Abbe's nimble intelligence had a weakside, which must have somewhat compromised his influence. He was soconfident in the reasonableness of his projects that he alwaysbelieved that if they were fairly considered the ruling powers couldnot fail to adopt them in their own interests. It is the nature of areformer to be sanguine, but the optimism of Saint-Pierre touchednaivete. Thousands might have agreed with his view that the celibacyof the Catholic clergy was an unwholesome institution, but when hedrew up a proposal for its abolition and imagined that the Pope,unable to resist his arguments, would immediately adopt it, theymight be excused for putting him down as a crank who could hardly betaken seriously. The form in which he put forward his memorablescheme for the abolition of war exhibits the same sanguinesimplicity. All his plans, Rousseau observed, showed a clear visionof what their effects would be, "but he judged like a child of meansto bring them about." But his abilities were great, and his actualinfluence was considerable. It would have been greater if he hadpossessed the gift of style.

2.

He was not the first to plan a definite scheme for establishing aperpetual peace. Long ago Emeric Cruce had given to the world aproposal for a universal league, including not only the Christiannations of Europe, but the Turks, Persians, and Tartars, which bymeans of a court of arbitration sitting at Venice should ensure thesettlement of all disputes by peaceful means. [Footnote: Le NouveauCynee (Paris, 1623). It has recently been reprinted with an Englishtranslation by T. W. Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence ofuniversal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautifulcentury which the ancient theologians promise after there haverolled by six thousand years. For they say that then the world willlive happily and in repose. Now it happens that that time has nearlyexpired, and even if it is not, it depends only on the Princes togive beforehand this happiness to their peoples." Later in thecentury, others had ventilated similar projects in obscurepublications, but the Abbe does not refer to any of hispredecessors.

He was not blinded by the superficial brilliancy of the reign ofLouis XIV. to the general misery which the ambitious war-policy ofthat sovran brought both upon France and upon her enemies. HisAnnales politiques are a useful correction to the Siecle de LouisQuatorze. It was in the course of the great struggle of the SpanishSuccession that he turned his attention to war and came to theconclusion that it is an unnecessary evil and even an absurdity. In1712 he attended the congress at Utrecht in the capacity ofsecretary to Cardinal de Polignac, one of the French delegates. Hisexperiences there confirmed his optimistic mind in the persuasionthat perpetual peace was an aim which might readily be realised; andin the following year he published the memoir which he had beenpreparing, in two volumes, to which he added a third four yearslater.

Though he appears not to have known the work of Cruce he did notclaim originality. He sheltered his proposal under an august name,entitling it Project of Henry the Great to render Peace Perpetual,explained by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. The reference is to the"great design" ascribed to Henry IV. by Sully, and aimed at theabasement of the power of Austria: a federation of the ChristianStates of Europe arranged in groups and under a sovran Diet, whichwould regulate international affairs and arbitrate in all quarrels.[Footnote: It is described in Sully's Memoires, Book XXX.] Saint-Pierre, ignoring the fact that Sully's object was to eliminate arival power, made it the text for his own scheme of a perpetualalliance of all the sovrans of Europe to guarantee to one anotherthe preservation of their states and to renounce war as a means ofsettling their differences. He drew up the terms of such analliance, and taking the European powers one by one demonstratedthat it was the plain interest of each to sign the articles. Oncethe articles were signed the golden age would begin. [Footnote: ForSully's grand Design compare the interesting article of Sir GeoffreyButler in the Edinburgh Review, October 1919.]

It is not to our present purpose to comment on this plan which theauthor with his characteristic simplicity seriously pressed upon theattention of statesmen. It is easy to criticise it in the light ofsubsequent history, and to see that, if the impossible had happenedand the experiment had been tried and succeeded, it might havecaused more suffering than all the wars from that day to this. Forit was based on a perpetuation of the political status quo inEurope. It assumed that the existing political distribution of powerwas perfectly satisfactory and conformable to the best interests ofall the peoples concerned. It would have hindered the Partition ofPoland, but it would have maintained the Austrian oppression ofItalians. The project also secured to the sovrans the heritage oftheir authority and guarded against civil wars. This assumed thatthe various existing constitutions were fundamentally just. Therealisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils ofautocratic governments. Its author did not perceive that the radicalevil in France was irresponsible power. It needed the reign of LouisXV. and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor tobring this home. The Abbe even thought that an increase of thedespotic authority of the government was desirable, provided thiswere accompanied by an increase in the enlightenment and virtue ofits ministers.

In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looksbeyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity. Noone, he says, can imagine or foresee the advantages which such analliance of European states will yield to Europe five hundred yearsafter its establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but itis beyond the powers of the human mind to discern its infiniteeffects in the future. It may produce results more precious thananything hitherto experienced by man. He supports his argument byobserving that our primitive ancestors could not foresee theimprovements which the course of ages would bring in theirrudimentary arrangements for securing social order.

3.

It is characteristic that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's ideas aboutProgress were a by-product of his particular schemes. In 1773 hepublished a Project to Perfect the Government of States, and here hesketched his view of the progressive course of civilisation. The oldlegend of the golden age, when men were perfectly happy, succeededby the ages of silver, bronze, and iron, exactly reverses the truthof history. The age of iron came first, the infancy of society, whenmen were poor and ignorant of the arts; it is the present conditionof the savages of Africa and America. The age of bronze ensued, inwhich there was more security, better laws, and the invention of themost necessary arts began. There followed the age of silver, andEurope has not yet emerged from it. Our reason has indeed reachedthe point of considering how war may be abolished, and is thusapproaching the golden age of the future; but the art of governmentand the general regulation of society, notwithstanding all theimprovements of the past, is still in its infancy. Yet all that isneeded is a short series of wise reigns in our European states toreach the age of gold or, in other words, a paradise on earth.

A few wise reigns. The Abbe shared the illusion of many thatgovernment is omnipotent and can bestow happiness on men. Theimperfections of governments were, he was convinced, chiefly due tothe fact that hitherto the ablest intellects had not been dedicatedto the study of the science of governing. The most essential part ofhis project was the formation of a Political Academy which should dofor politics what the Academy of Sciences did for the study ofnature, and should act as an advisory body to ministers of state onall questions of the public welfare. If this proposal and someothers were adopted, he believed that the golden age would not longbe delayed. These observations--hardly more than obiter dicta--showthat Saint-Pierre's general view of the world was moulded by aconception of civilisation progressing towards a goal of humanhappiness. In 1737 he published a special work to explain thisconception: the Observations on the Continuous Progress of UniversalReason.

He recurs to the comparison of the life of collective humanity tothat of an individual, and, like Fontenelle and Terrasson,accentuates the point where the analogy fails. We may regard ourrace as composed of all the nations that have been and will be--andassign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is tenthousand years old a century will be what a single year is in thelife of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. Themortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through theenfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by theperpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itselfat the end of ten thousand years more capable of growing in wisdomand happiness than it was at the end of four thousand.

At present the race is apparently not more than seven or eightthousand years old, and is only "in the infancy of human reason,"compared with what it will be five or six thousand years hence. Andwhen that stage is reached, it will only have entered on what we maycall its first youth, when we consider what it will be when it is ahundred thousand years older still, continually growing in reasonand wisdom.

Here we have for the first time, expressed in definite terms, thevista of an immensely long progressive life in front of humanity.Civilisation is only in its infancy. Bacon, like Pascal, hadconceived it to be in its old age. Fontenelle and Perrault seem tohave regarded it as in its virility; they set no term to itsduration, but they did not dwell on future prospects. The Abbe wasthe first to fix his eye on the remote destinies of the race andname immense periods of time. It did not occur to him to considerthat our destinies are bound up with those of the solar system, andthat it is useless to operate with millennial periods of progressunless you are assured of a corresponding stability in the cosmicenvironment.

As a test of the progress which reason has already made, Saint-Pierre asserts that a comparison of the best English and Frenchworks on morals and politics with the best works of Plato andAristotle proves that the human race has made a sensible advance.But that advance would have been infinitely greater were it not thatthree general obstacles retarded it and even, at some times and insome countries, caused a retrogression. These obstacles were wars,superstition, and the Jealousy of rulers who feared that progress inthe science of politics would be dangerous to themselves. Inconsequence of these impediments it was only in the time of Bodinand Bacon that the human race began to start anew from the pointwhich it had reached in the days of Plato and Aristotle.

Since then the rate of progress has been accelerated, and this hasbeen due to several causes. The expansion of sea commerce hasproduced more wealth, and wealth means greater leisure, and morewriters and readers. In the second place, mathematics and physicsare more studied in colleges, and their tendency is to liberate usfrom subjection to the authority of the ancients. Again, thefoundation of scientific Academies has given facilities both forcommunicating and for correcting new discoveries; the art ofprinting provides a means for diffusing them; and, finally, thehabit of writing in the vulgar tongue makes them accessible. Theauthor might also have referred to the modern efforts to popularisescience, in which his friend Fontenelle had been one of the leaders.

He proceeds, in this connection, to lay down a rather doubtfulprinciple, that in any two countries the difference in enlightenmentbetween the lowest classes will correspond to the difference betweenthe most highly educated classes. At present, he says, Paris andLondon are the places where human wisdom has reached the mostadvanced stage. It is certain that the ten best men of the highestclass at Ispahan or Constantinople will be inferior in theirknowledge of politics and ethics to the ten most distinguished sagesof Paris or London. And this will be true in all classes. The thirtymost intelligent children of the age of fourteen at Paris will bemore enlightened than the thirty most intelligent children of thesame age at Constantinople, and the same proportional differencewill be true of the lowest classes of the two cities.

But while the progress of speculative reason has been rapid,practical reason--the distinction is the Abbe's--has made littleadvance. In point of morals and general happiness the world isapparently much the same as ever. Our mediocre savants know twentytimes as much as Socrates and Confucius, but our most virtuous menare not more virtuous than they. The growth of science has addedmuch to the arts and conveniences of life, and to the sum ofpleasures, and will add more. The progress in physical science ispart of the progress of the "universal human reason," whose aim isthe augmentation of our happiness. But there are two other scienceswhich are much more important for the promotion of happiness--Ethicsand Politics--and these, neglected by men of genius, have madelittle way in the course of two thousand years. It is a gravemisfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves toperfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankindthan those in which they made their great discoveries. They fellinto a prevailing error as to the comparative values of the variousdomains of knowledge, an error to which we must also ascribe thefact that while Academies of Sciences and Belles-Lettres exist thereare no such institutions for Politics or Ethics.

By these arguments he establishes to his own satisfaction that thereare no irremovable obstacles to the Progress of the human racetowards happiness, no hindrances that could not be overcome ifgovernments only saw eye to eye with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre.Superstition is already on the decline; there would be no more warsif his simple scheme for permanent peace were adopted. Let the Stateimmediately found Political and Ethical Academies; let the ablestmen consecrate their talents to the science of government; and in ahundred years we shall make more progress than we should make in twothousand at the rate we are moving. If these things are done, humanreason will have advanced so far in two or three millenniums thatthe wisest men of that age will be as far superior to the wisest ofto-day as these are to the wisest African savages. This "perpetualand unlimited augmentation of reason" will one day produce anincrease in human happiness which would astonish us more than ourown civilisation would astonish the Kaffirs.

4.

The Abbe de Saint-Pierre was indeed terribly at ease in confrontingthe deepest and most complex problems which challenge the intellectof man. He had no notion of their depth and complexity, and helightly essayed them, treating human nature, as if it were anabstraction, by a method which he would doubtless have described asCartesian. He was simply operating with the ideas which were allround him in a society saturated with Cartesianism,--supremacy ofhuman reason, progressive enlightenment, the value of this life forits own sake, and the standard of utility. Given these ideas and theparticular bias of his own mind, it required no great ingenuity toadvance from the thought of the progress of science to the thoughtof progress in man's moral nature and his social conditions. Theomnipotence of governments to mould the destinies of peoples, thepossibility of the creation of enlightened governments, and theindefinite progress of enlightenment--all articles of his belief--were the terms of an argument of the sorites form, which it was asimple matter to develop in his brief treatise.

But we must not do him injustice. He was a much more considerablethinker than posterity for a long time was willing to believe. It iseasy to ridicule some of his projets, and dismiss him as a crank whowas also somewhat of a bore. The truth, however, is that many of hisschemes were sound and valuable. His economic ideas, which hethought out for himself, were in advance of his time, and he haseven been described by a recent writer as "un contemporain egare auxviii siecle." Some of his financial proposals were put intopractice by Turgot. But his significance in the development of therevolutionary ideas which were to gain control in the second half ofthe eighteenth century has hardly been appreciated yet, and it wasimperfectly appreciated by his contemporaries.

It is easy to see why. His theories are buried in his multitudinousprojets. If, instead of working out the details of endlessparticular reforms, he had built up general theories of governmentand society, economics and education, they might have had no moreintrinsic value, but he would have been recognised as the precursorof the Encyclopaedists.

For his principles are theirs. The omnipotence of government andlaws to mould the morals of peoples; the subordination of allknowledge to the goddess of utility; the deification of humanreason; and the doctrine of Progress. His crude utilitarianism ledhim to depreciate the study of mathematical and physical sciences--notwithstanding his veneration for Descartes--as comparativelyuseless, and he despised the fine arts as waste of time and toilwhich might be better spent. He had no knowledge of natural scienceand he had no artistic susceptibility. The philosophers of theEncyclopaedia did not go so far, but they tended in this direction.They were cold and indifferent towards speculative science, and theywere inclined to set higher value on artisans than on artists.

In his religious ideas the Abbe differed from Voltaire and the latersocial philosophers in one important respect, but this verydifference was a consequence of his utilitarianism. Like them he wasa Deist, as we saw; he had imbibed the spirit of Bayle and thedoctrine of the English rationalists, which were penetrating Frenchsociety during the later part of his life. His God, however, wasmore than the creator and organiser of the Encyclopaedists, he wasalso the "Dieu vengeur et remunerateur" in whom Voltaire believed.But here his faith was larger than Voltaire's. For while Voltairereferred the punishments and rewards to this life, the Abbe believedin the immortality of the soul, in heaven and hell. He acknowledgedthat immortality could not be demonstrated, that it was onlyprobable, but he clung to it firmly and even intolerantly. It isclear from his writings that his affection for this doctrine was dueto its utility, as an auxiliary to the magistrate and the tutor, andalso to the consideration that Paradise would add to the total ofhuman happiness.

But though his religion had more articles, he was as determined afoe of "superstition" as Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest. He did notgo so far as they in aggressive rationalism--he belonged to an oldergeneration--but his principles were the same.

The Abbe de Saint-Pierre thus represents the transition from theearlier Cartesianism, which was occupied with purely intellectualproblems, to the later thought of the eighteenth century, whichconcentrated itself on social problems. He anticipated the"humanistic" spirit of the Encyclopaedists, who were to make man, ina new sense, the centre of the world. He originated, or at least wasthe first to proclaim, the new creed of man's destinies, indefinitesocial progress.

CHAPTER VII

NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT

The theory of human Progress could not be durably established byabstract arguments, or on the slender foundations laid by the Abbede Saint-Pierre. It must ultimately be judged by the evidenceafforded by history, and it is not accidental that,contemporaneously with the advent of this idea, the study of historyunderwent a revolution. If Progress was to be more than the sanguinedream of an optimist it must be shown that man's career on earth hadnot been a chapter of accidents which might lead anywhere ornowhere, but is subject to discoverable laws which have determinedits general route, and will secure his arrival at the desirableplace. Hitherto a certain order and unity had been found in historyby the Christian theory of providential design and final causes. Newprinciples of order and unity were needed to replace the principleswhich rationalism had discredited. Just as the advance of sciencedepended on the postulate that physical phenomena are subject toinvariable laws, so if any conclusions were to be drawn from historysome similar postulate as to social phenomena was required.

It was thus in harmony with the general movement of thought thatabout the middle of the eighteenth century new lines ofinvestigation were opened leading to sociology, the history ofcivilisation, and the philosophy of history. Montesquieu's Del'esprit des lois, which may claim to be the parent work of modernsocial science, Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs, and Turgot's planof a Histoire universelle begin a new era in man's vision of thepast.

1.

Montesquieu was not among the apostles of the idea of Progress. Itnever secured any hold upon his mind. But he had grown up in thesame intellectual climate in which that idea was produced; he hadbeen nurtured both on the dissolving, dialectic of Bayle, and on theCartesian enunciation of natural law. And his work contributed tothe service, not of the doctrine of the past, but of the doctrine ofthe future.

For he attempted to extend the Cartesian theory to social facts. Helaid down that political, like physical, phenomena are subject togeneral laws. He had already conceived this, his most striking andimportant idea, when he wrote the Considerations on the Greatnessand Decadence of the Romans (1734), in which he attempted to applyit:

It is not Fortune who governs the world, as we see from the historyof the Romans. There are general causes, moral or physical, whichoperate in every monarchy, raise it, maintain it, or overthrow it;all that occurs is subject to these causes; and if a particularcause, like the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state,there was a general cause which made the downfall of this stateensue from a single battle. In a word, the principal movement(l'allure principale) draws with it all the particular occurrences.

But if this excludes Fortune it also dispenses with Providence,design, and final causes; and one of the effects of theConsiderations which Montesquieu cannot have overlooked was todiscredit Bossuet's treatment of history.

The Esprit des lois appeared fourteen years later. Among books whichhave exercised a considerable influence on thought few are moredisappointing to a modern reader. The author had not the gift ofwhat might be called logical architecture, and his work produces theeffect of a collection of ideas which he was unable to co-ordinatein the clarity of a system. A new principle, the operation ofgeneral causes, is enthroned; but, beyond the obvious distinction ofphysical and moral, they are not classified. We have no guaranteethat the moral causes are fully enumerated, and those which areoriginal are not distinguished from those which are derived. Thegeneral cause which Montesquieu impresses most clearly on thereader's mind is that of physical environment--geography andclimate.

The influence of climate on civilisation was not a new idea. Inmodern times, as we have seen, it was noticed by Bodin andrecognised by Fontenelle. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre applied it toexplain the origin of the Mohammedan religion, and the Abbe Du Bosin his Reflexions on Poetry and Painting maintained that climatehelps to determine the epochs of art and science. Chardin in hisTravels, a book which Montesquieu studied, had also appreciated itsimportance. But Montesquieu drew general attention to it, and sincehe wrote, geographical conditions have been recognised by allinquirers as an influential factor in the development of humansocieties. His own discussion of the question did not result in anyuseful conclusions. He did not determine the limits of the action ofphysical conditions, and a reader hardly knows whether to regardthem as fundamental or accessory, as determining the course ofcivilisation or only perturbing it. "Several things govern men," hesays, "climate, religion, laws, precepts of government, historicalexamples, morals, and manners, whence is formed as their result ageneral mind (esprit general)." This co-ordination of climate withproducts of social life is characteristic of his unsystematicthought. But the remark which the author went on to make, that thereis always a correlation between the laws of a people and its espritgeneral, was important. It pointed to the theory that all theproducts of social life are closely interrelated.

In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion thatlegislation has an almost unlimited power to modify socialconditions. We have seen this in the case of Saint-Pierre.Montesquieu's conception of general laws should have been anantidote to this belief. It had however less effect on hiscontemporaries than we might have expected, and they found more totheir purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on manners.There may be something in Comte's suggestion that he could not givehis conception any real consistency or vigour, just because he washimself unconsciously under the influence of excessive faith in theeffects of legislative action.

A fundamental defect in Montesquieu's treatment of social phenomenais that he abstracted them from their relations in time. It was hismerit to attempt to explain the correlation of laws and institutionswith historical circumstances, but he did not distinguish or connectstages of civilisation. He was inclined to confound, as Sorel hasobserved, all periods and constitutions. Whatever be the value ofthe idea of Progress, we may agree with Comte that, if Montesquieuhad grasped it, he would have produced a more striking work. Hisbook announces a revolution in the study of political science, butin many ways belongs itself to the pre-Montesquieu era.

2.

In the same years in which Montesquieu was busy on the compositionof the Esprit des lois, Voltaire was writing his Age of Louis XIV.and his Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations, and on thePrincipal Facts of History from Charlemagne to the Death of LouisXIII. The former work, which everybody reads still, appeared in1751. Parts of the Essay, which has long since fallen into neglect,were published in the Mercure de France between 1745 and 1751; itwas issued complete in 1756, along with the Age of Louis XIV., whichwas its continuation. If we add the Precis of the Reign of Louis XV.(1769), and observe that the Introduction and first fourteenchapters of the Essay sketch the history of the world beforeCharlemagne, and that China, India, and America are included in thesurvey, Voltaire's work amounts to a complete survey of thecivilisation of the world from the earliest times to his own. IfMontesquieu founded social science, Voltaire created the history ofcivilisation, and the Essay, for all its limitations, stands out asone of the considerable books of the century.

In his Age of Louis XIV. he announced that his object was "to paintnot the actions of a single man, but the mind of men (l'esprit deshommes) in the most enlightened age that had ever been," and that"the progress of the arts and sciences" was an essential part of hissubject. In the same way he proposed in the Essay to trace"l'histoire de l'esprit humain," not the details of facts, and toshow by what steps man advanced "from the barbarous rusticity" ofthe times of Charlemagne and his successors "to the politeness ofour own." To do this, he said, was really to write the history ofopinion, for all the great successive social and political changeswhich have transformed the world were due to changes of opinion.Prejudice succeeded prejudice, error followed error; "at last, withtime men came to correct their ideas and learn to think."

The motif of the book is, briefly, that wars and religions have beenthe great obstacles to the progress of humanity, and that if theywere abolished, with the prejudices which engender them, the worldwould rapidly improve.

"We may believe," he says, "that reason and industry will alwaysprogress more and more; that the useful arts will be improved; thatof the evils which have afflicted men, prejudices, which are nottheir least scourge, will gradually disappear among all those whogovern nations, and that philosophy, universally diffused, will givesome consolation to human nature for the calamities which it willexperience in all ages."

This indeed is not the tone of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Voltaire'soptimism was always tempered with cynicism. But the idea of Progressis there, though moderately conceived. And it is based on the sameprinciple--universal reason implanted in man, which "subsists inspite of all the passions which make war on it, in spite of all thetyrants who would drown it in blood, in spite of the imposters whowould annihilate it by superstition." And this was certainly hisconsidered view. His common sense prevented him from indulging inUtopian speculations about the future; and his cynicism constantlyled him to use the language of a pessimist. But at an early stage ofhis career he had taken up arms for human nature against that"sublime misanthrope" Pascal, who "writes against human naturealmost as he wrote against the Jesuits"; and he returned to theattack at the end of his life. Now Pascal's Pensees enshrined atheory of life--the doctrine of original sin, the idea that theobject of life is to prepare for death--which was sternly opposed tothe spirit of Progress. Voltaire instinctively felt that this was anenemy that had to be dealt with. In a lighter vein he had maintainedin a well-known poem, Le Mondain, [Footnote: 1756.] the value ofcivilisation and all its effects, including luxury, against thosewho regretted the simplicity of ancient times, the golden age ofSaturn.

O le bon temps que ce siecle de fer!

Life in Paris, London, or Rome to-day is infinitely preferable tolife in the garden of Eden.

To return to the Essay, it flung down the gage of battle to thatconception of the history of the world which had been brilliantlyrepresented by Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle. Thiswork was constantly in Voltaire's mind. He pointed out that it hadno claim to be universal; it related only to four or five peoples,and especially the little Jewish nation which "was unknown to therest of the world or justly despised," but which Bossuet made thecentre of interest, as if the final cause of all the great empiresof antiquity lay in their relations to the Jews. He had Bossuet inmind when he said "we will speak of the Jews as we would speak ofScythians or Greeks, weighing probabilities and discussing facts."In his new perspective the significance of Hebrew history is for thefirst time reduced to moderate limits.

But it was not only in this particular, though central, point thatVoltaire challenged Bossuet's view. He eliminated final causesaltogether, and Providence plays no part on his historical stage.Here his work reinforced the teaching of Montesquieu. OtherwiseMontesquieu and Voltaire entirely differed in their methods.Voltaire concerned himself only with the causal enchainment ofevents and the immediate motives of men. His interpretation ofhistory was confined to the discovery of particular causes; he didnot consider the operation of those larger general causes whichMontesquieu investigated. Montesquieu sought to show that thevicissitudes of societies were subject to law; Voltaire believedthat events were determined by chance where they were notconsciously guided by human reason. The element of chance isconspicuous even in legislation: "almost all laws have beeninstituted to meet passing needs, like remedies appliedfortuitously, which have cured one patient and kill others."

On Voltaire's theory, the development of humanity might at anymoment have been diverted into a different course; but whatevercourse it took the nature of human reason would have ensured aprogress in civilisation. Yet the reader of the Essay and Louis XIV.might well have come away with a feeling that the security ofProgress is frail and precarious. If fortune has governed events, ifthe rise and fall of empires, the succession of religions, therevolutions of states, and most of the great crises of history weredecided by accidents, is there any cogent ground for believing thathuman reason, the principle to which Voltaire attributes the advanceof civilisation, will prevail in the long run? Civilisation has beenorganised here and there, now and then, up to a certain point; therehave been eras of rapid progress, but how can we be sure that theseare not episodes, themselves also fortuitous? For growth has beenfollowed by decay, progress by regress; can it be said that history,authorises the conclusion that reason will ever gain such anascendancy that the play of chance will no longer be able to thwarther will? Is such a conclusion more than a hope, unsanctioned by thedata of past experience, merely one of the characteristics of theage of illumination?

Voltaire and Montesquieu thus raised fundamental questions of greatmoment for the doctrine of Progress, questions which belong to whatwas soon to be known as the Philosophy of History, a name inventedby Voltaire, though hardly meant by him in the sense which itafterwards assumed.

3.

Six years before Voltaire's Essay was published in its complete forma young man was planning a work on the same subject. Turgot ishonourably remembered as an economist and administrator, but if hehad ever written the Discourses on Universal History which hedesigned at the age of twenty-three his position in historicalliterature might have overshadowed his other claims to beremembered. We possess a partial sketch of its plan, which issupplemented by two lectures he delivered at the Sorbonne in 1750;so that we know his general conceptions.

He had assimilated the ideas of the Esprit des lois, and it isprobable that he had read the parts of Voltaire's work which hadappeared in a periodical. His work, like Voltaire's, was to be achallenge to Bossuet's view of history; his purpose was to trace thefortunes of the race in the light of the idea of Progress. Heoccasionally refers to Providence but this is no more than a prudentlip-service. Providence has no functions in his scheme. The partwhich it played in Bossuet is usurped by those general causes whichhe had learned from Montesquieu. But his systematic mind would haveorganised and classified the ideas which Montesquieu left somewhatconfused. He criticised the inductions drawn in the Esprit des loisconcerning the influence of climate as hasty and exaggerated; and hepointed out that the physical causes can only produce their effectsby acting on "the hidden principles which contribute to form ourmind and character." It follows that the psychical or moral causesare the first element to consider, and it is a fault of method totry to evaluate physical causes till we have exhausted the moral,and are certain that the phenomena cannot be explained by thesealone. In other words, the study of the development of societiesmust be based on psychology; and for Turgot, as for all hisprogressive contemporaries, psychology meant the philosophy ofLocke.

General necessary causes, therefore, which we should rather callconditions, have determined the course of history--the nature ofman, his passions, and his reason, in the first place; and in thesecond, his environment,--geography and climate. But its course is astrict sequence of particular causes and effects, "which bind thestate of the world (at a given moment) to all those which havepreceded it." Turgot does not discuss the question of free-will, buthis causal continuity does not exclude "the free action of greatmen." He conceives universal history as the progress of the humanrace advancing as an immense whole steadily, though slowly, throughalternating periods of calm and disturbance towards greaterperfection. The various units of the entire mass do not move withequal steps, because nature is not impartial with her gifts. Somemen have talents denied to others, and the gifts of nature aresometimes developed by circumstances, sometimes left buried inobscurity. The inequalities in the march of nations are due to theinfinite variety of circumstances; and these inequalities may betaken to prove that the world had a beginning, for in an eternalduration they would have disappeared.

But the development of human societies has not been guided by humanreason. Men have not consciously made general happiness the end oftheir actions. They have been conducted by passion and ambition andhave never known to what goal they were moving. For if reason hadpresided, progress would soon have been arrested. To avoid warpeoples would have remained in isolation, and the race would havelived divided for ever into a multitude of isolated groups, speakingdifferent tongues. All these groups would have been limited in therange of their ideas, stationary in science, art, and government,and would never have risen above mediocrity. The history of China isan example of the results of restricted intercourse among peoples.Thus the unexpected conclusion emerges, that without unreason andinjustice there would have been no progress.

It is hardly necessary to observe that this argument is untenable.The hypothesis assumes that reason is in control among the primitivepeoples, and at the same time supposes that its power wouldcompletely disappear if they attempted to engage in peacefulintercourse. But though Turgot has put his point in an unconvincingform, his purpose was to show that as a matter of fact "thetumultuous and dangerous passions" have been driving-forces whichhave moved the world in a desirable direction till the time shouldcome for reason to take the helm.

Thus, while Turgot might have subscribed to Voltaire's assertionthat history is largely "un ramas de crimes, de folies, et demalheurs," his view of the significance of man's sufferings isdifferent and almost approaches the facile optimism of Pope--"whatever is, is right." He regards all the race's actualexperiences as the indispensable mechanism of Progress, and does notregret its mistakes and calamities. Many changes and revolutions, heobserves, may seem to have had most mischievous effects; yet everychange has brought some advantage, for it has been a new experienceand therefore has been instructive. Man advances by committingerrors. The history of science shows (as Fontenelle had pointed out)that truth is reached over the ruins of false hypotheses.

The difficulty presented by periods of decadence and barbarismsucceeding epochs of enlightenment is met by the assertion that insuch dark times the world has not stood still; there has really beena progression which, though relatively inconspicuous, is notunimportant. In the Middle Ages, which are the prominent case, therewere improvements in mechanical arts, in commerce, in some of thehabits of civil life, all of which helped to prepare the way forhappier times. Here Turgot's view of history is sharply opposed toVoltaire's. He considers Christianity to have been a powerful agentof civilisation, not a hinderer or an enemy. Had he executed hisdesign, his work might well have furnished a notable makeweight tothe view held by Voltaire, and afterwards more judicially developedby Gibbon, that "the triumph of barbarism and religion" was acalamity for the world.

Turgot also propounded two laws of development. He observed thatwhen a people is progressing, every step it takes causes anacceleration in the rate of progress. And he anticipated Comte'sfamous "law" of the three stages of intellectual evolution, thoughwithout giving it the extensive and fundamental significance whichComte claimed for it. "Before man understood the causal connectionof physical phenomena, nothing was so natural as to suppose theywere produced by intelligent beings, invisible and resemblingourselves; for what else would they have resembled?" That is Comte'stheological stage. "When philosophers recognised the absurdity ofthe fables about the gods, but had not yet gained an insight intonatural history, they thought to explain the causes of phenomena byabstract expressions such as essences and faculties." That is themetaphysical stage. "It was only at a later period, that byobserving the reciprocal mechanical action of bodies hypotheses wereformed which could be developed by mathematics and verified byexperience." There is the positive stage. The observation assuredlydoes not possess the far-reaching importance which Comte attached toit; but whatever value it has, Turgot deserves the credit of havingbeen the first to state it.

The notes which Turgot made for his plan permit us to conjecturethat his Universal History would have been a greater and moreprofound work than the Essay of Voltaire. It would have embodied ina digested form the ideas of Montesquieu to which Voltaire paidlittle attention, and the author would have elaborated the intimateconnection and mutual interaction among all social phenomena--government and morals, religion, science, and arts. While hisgeneral thesis coincided with that of Voltaire--the gradual advanceof humanity towards a state of enlightenment and reasonableness,--hemade the idea of Progress more vital; for him it was an organisingconception, just as the idea of Providence was for St. Augustine andBossuet an organising conception, which gave history its unity andmeaning. The view that man has throughout been blindly moving in theright direction is the counterpart of what Bossuet represented as adivine plan wrought out by the actions of men who are ignorant ofit, and is sharply opposed to the views, of Voltaire and the otherphilosophers of the day who ascribed Progress exclusively to humanreason consciously striving against ignorance and passion.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS

1.

The intellectual movement which prepared French opinion for theRevolution and supplied the principles for reconstituting societymay be described as humanistic in the sense that man was the centreof speculative interest.

"One consideration especially that we ought never to lose fromsight," says Diderot, "is that, if we ever banish a man, or thethinking and contemplative being, from above the surface of theearth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no morethan a scene of melancholy and silence ... It is the presence of manthat gives its interest to the existence of other beings ... Whyshould we not make him a common centre? ... Man is the single termfrom which we ought to set out." [Footnote: The passage fromDiderot's article Encyclopedie is given as translated by Morley,Diderot, i, 145.] Hence psychology, morals, the structure ofsociety, were the subjects which riveted attention instead of thelarger supra-human problems which had occupied Descartes,Malebranche, and Leibnitz. It mattered little whether the universewas the best that could be constructed; what mattered was therelation of man's own little world to his will and capacities.

Physical science was important only in so far as it could helpsocial science and minister to the needs of man. The closest analogyto this development of thought is not offered by the Renaissance, towhich the description HUMANISTIC has been conventionallyappropriated, but rather by the age of illumination in Greece in thelatter half of the fifth century B.C., represented by Protagoras,Socrates, and others who turned from the ultimate problems of thecosmos, hitherto the main study of philosophers, to man, his natureand his works.

In this revised form of "anthropo-centrism" we see how the generalmovement of thought has instinctively adapted itself to theastronomical revolution. On the Ptolemaic system it was notincongruous or absurd that man, lord of the central domain in theuniverse, should regard himself as the most important cosmiccreature. This is the view, implicit in the Christian scheme, whichhad been constructed on the old erroneous cosmology. When the trueplace of the earth was shown and man found himself in a tiny planetattached to one of innumerable solar worlds, his cosmic importancecould no longer be maintained. He was reduced to the condition of aninsect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividlyillustrated in Micromegas. But man is resourceful; [words in Greek].Displaced, along with his home, from the centre of things, hediscovers a new means of restoring his self-importance; heinterprets his humiliation as a deliverance. Finding himself in aninsignificant island floating in the immensity of space, he decidesthat he is at last master of his own destinies; he can fling awaythe old equipment of final causes, original sin, and the rest; hecan construct his own chart and, bound by no cosmic scheme, he needtake the universe into account only in so far as he judges it to beto his own profit. Or, if he is a philosopher, he may say that,after all, the universe for him is built out of his own sensations,and that by virtue of this relativity "anthropo-centrism" isrestored in a new and more effective form.

Built out of his own sensations: for the philosophy of Locke was nowtriumphant in France. I have used the term Cartesianism todesignate, not the metaphysical doctrines of Descartes (innateideas, two substances, and the rest), but the great principles whichsurvived the passing of his metaphysical system--the supremacy ofreason, and the immutability of natural laws, not subject toprovidential interventions. These principles still controlledthought, but the particular views of Descartes on mental phenomenawere superseded in France by the psychology of Locke, whoseinfluence was established by Voltaire and Condillac. The doctrinethat all our ideas are derived from the senses lay at the root ofthe whole theory of man and society, in the light of which therevolutionary thinkers, Diderot, Helvetius, and their fellows,criticised the existing order and exposed the reigning prejudices.This sensationalism (which went beyond what Locke himself had reallymeant) involved the strict relativity of knowledge and led at onceto the old pragmatic doctrine of Protagoras, that man is the measureof all things. And the spirit of the French philosophers of theeighteenth century was distinctly pragmatic. The advantage of manwas their principle, and the value of speculation was judged by itsdefinite service to humanity. "The value and rights of truth arefounded on its utility," which is "the unique measure of man'sjudgements," one thinker asserts; another declares that "the usefulcircumscribes everything," l'utile circonscrit tout; another laysdown that "to be virtuous is to be useful; to be vicious is to beuseless or harmful; that is the sum of morality." Helvetius,anticipating Bentham, works out the theory that utility is the onlypossible basis of ethics. Bacon, the utilitarian, was extolled likeLocke. [Footnote: The passages quoted on utility are from d'Holbach,Systems de la nature, i. c. 12, p. 224; c. 15, p. 312; Diderot, DeI'interpretation de la nature in OEuvres, ii. p. 13; Raynal,Histoire des deux Indes, vii. p. 416. The effectiveness of theteaching may be illustrated from the Essay on Man, by AntoineRivarol, whom Burke called the Tacitus of the Revolution. "Thevirtues are only virtues because they are useful to the human race."OEuvres choisis (ed. de Lescure), i. p. 211.] As, a hundred yearsbefore, his influence had inspired the foundation of the RoyalSociety, so now his name was invoked by the founders of theEncyclopaedia. [Footnote: See d'Alembert's tribute to him in theDiscours preliminaire.]

Beneath all philosophical speculation there is an undercurrent ofemotion, and in the French philosophers of the eighteenth centurythis emotional force was strong and even violent. They aimed atpractical results. Their work was a calculated campaign to transformthe principles and the spirit of governments and to destroysacerdotalism. The problem for the human race being to reach a stateof felicity by its own powers, these thinkers believed that it wassoluble by the gradual triumph of reason over prejudice andknowledge over ignorance. Violent revolution was far from theirthoughts; by the diffusion of knowledge they hoped to create apublic opinion which would compel governments to change the tenor oftheir laws and administration and make the happiness of the peopletheir guiding principle. The optimistic confidence that man isperfectible, which means capable of indefinite improvement, inspiredthe movement as a whole, however greatly particular thinkers mightdiffer in their views.

Belief in Progress was their sustaining faith, although, occupied bythe immediate problems of amelioration, they left it rather vagueand ill-defined. The word itself is seldom pronounced in theirwritings. The idea is treated as subordinate to the other ideas inthe midst of which it had grown up: Reason, Nature, Humanity,Illumination (lumieres). It has not yet entered upon an independentlife of its own and received a distinct label, though it is alreadya vital force.

In reviewing the influences which were forming a new public opinionduring the forty years before the Revolution, it is convenient forthe present purpose to group together the thinkers (includingVoltaire) associated with the Encyclopaedia, who represented acritical and consciously aggressive force against traditionaltheories and existing institutions. The constructive thinkerRousseau was not less aggressive, but he stands apart and opposed,by his hostility to modern civilisation. Thirdly, we mustdistinguish the school of Economists, also reformers and optimists,but of more conservative temper than the typical Encyclopaedists.

2.

The Encyclopaedia (1751-1765) has rightly been pronounced thecentral work of the rationalistic movement which made the France of1789 so different from the France of 1715. [Footnote: The generalviews which governed the work may be gathered from d'Alembert'sintroductory discourse and from Diderot's article Encyclopedie. Aninteresting sketch of the principal contributors will be found inMorley's Diderot, i. chap. v. Another modern study of theEncyclopaedic movement is the monograph of L. Ducros, LesEncyclopidistes (1900). Helvetius has recently been the subject of astudy by Albert Keim (Helvetius, sa vie et son oeuvre, 1907). Amongother works which help the study of the speculations of this agefrom various points of view may be mentioned: Marius Roustan, LesPhilosophes et la societe francaise au xviii siecle(1906); Espinas,La Philosophie sociale du xviii siecle et la Revolution (1898);Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviii siecle(1895). I have notmentioned in the text Boullanger (1722-1758), who contributed to theEncyclopaedia the article on Political Economy (which has nothing todo with economics but treats of ancient theocracies); the emphasislaid on his views on progress by Buchez (op. cit. i. III sqq.) isquite excessive.] It was the organised section of a vast propaganda,speculative and practical, carried on by men of the most variousviews, most of whom were associated directly with it. As has wellbeen observed, it did for the rationalism of the eighteenth centuryin France much what the Fortnightly Review, under the editorship ofMr. Morley (from 1868 to 1882) did for that of the nineteenth inEngland, as an organ for the penetrating criticism of traditionalbeliefs. If Diderot, who directed the Encyclopaedia with theassistance of d'Alembert the mathematician, had lived a hundredyears later he would probably have edited a journal.

We saw that the "solidarity" of the sciences was one of theconceptions associated with the theory of intellectual progress, andthat the popularisation of knowledge was another. Both theseconceptions inspired the Encyclopaedia, which was to gather up andconcentrate the illumination of the modern age. It was to establishthe lines of communication among all departments, "to enclose in theunity of a system the infinitely various branches of knowledge." Andit was to be a library of popular instruction. But it was alsointended to be an organ of propaganda. In the history of theintellectual revolution it is in some ways the successor of theDictionary of Bayle, which, two generations before, collected thematerial of war to demolish traditional doctrines. The Encyclopaediacarried on the campaign against authority and superstition byindirect methods, but it was the work of men who were not scepticslike Bayle, but had ideals, positive purposes, and social hopes.They were not only confident in reason and in science, but most ofthem had also a more or less definite belief in the possibility ofan advance of humanity towards perfection.

As one of their own band afterwards remarked, they were lessoccupied in enlarging the bounds of knowledge than in spreading thelight and making war on prejudice. [Footnote: Condorcet, Esquisse,p. 206 (ed. 1822).] The views of the individual contributorsdiffered greatly, and they cannot be called a school, but theyagreed so far in common tendencies that they were able to form a co-operative alliance.

The propaganda of which the Encyclopaedia was the centre wasreinforced by the independent publications of some of the leadingmen who collaborated or were closely connected with their circle,notably those of Diderot himself, Baron d'Holbach, and Helvetius.

3.

The optimism of the Encyclopaedists was really based on an intenseconsciousness of the enlightenment of their own age. Theprogressiveness of knowledge was taken as axiomatic, but was thereany guarantee that the light, now confined to small circles, couldever enlighten the world and regenerate mankind? They found theguarantee they required, not in an induction from the pastexperience of the race, but in an a priori theory: the indefinitemalleability of human nature by education and institutions. This hadbeen, as we saw, assumed by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. It pervadedthe speculation of the age, and was formally deduced from thesensational psychology of Locke and Condillac. It was developed, inan extreme form, in the work of Helvetius, De l'esprit (1758).

In this book, which was to exert a large influence in England,Helvetius sought, among other things, to show that the science ofmorals is equivalent to the science of legislation, and that in awell-organised society all men are capable of rising to the highestpoint of mental development. Intellectual and moral inequalitiesbetween man and man arise entirely from differences in education andsocial circumstances. Genius itself is not a gift of nature; the manof genius is a product of circumstances--social, not physical, forHelvetius rejects the influence of climate. It follows that if youchange education and social institutions you can change thecharacter of men.

The error of Helvetius in ignoring the irremovable physicaldifferences between individuals, the varieties of cerebralorganisation, was at once pointed out by Diderot. This error,however, was not essential to the general theory of the immeasurablepower of social institutions over human character, and otherthinkers did not fall into it. All alike, indeed, were blind to thefactor of heredity. But the theory in its collective applicationcontains a truth which nineteenth century critics, biassed by theirstudies in heredity, have been prone to overlook. The socialinheritance of ideas and emotions to which the individual issubmitted from infancy is more important than the tendenciesphysically transmitted from parent to child. The power of educationand government in moulding the members of a society has recentlybeen illustrated on a large scale in the psychologicaltransformation of the German people in the life of a generation.

It followed from the theory expounded by Helvetius that there is noimpassable barrier between the advanced and the stationary orretrograde races of the earth. [Footnote: The most informingdiscussion of the relations between the Advanced and Backward racesis Bryce's Romanes Lecture (1902).] "True morality," Baron d'Holbachwrote, "should be the same for all the inhabitants of the globe. Thesavage man and the civilised; the white man, the red man, the blackman; Indian and European, Chinaman and Frenchman, Negro and Lapphave the same nature. The differences between them are onlymodifications of the common nature produced by climate, government,education, opinions, and the various causes which operate on them.Men differ only in the ideas they form of happiness and the meanswhich they have imagined to obtain it." Here again the eighteenthcentury theorists held a view which can no longer be dismissed asabsurd. Some are coming round to the opinion that enormousdifferences in capacity which seem fundamental are a result of thedifferences in social inheritance, and that these again are due to along sequence of historical circumstances; and consequently thatthere is no people in the world doomed by nature to perpetualinferiority or irrevocably disqualified by race from playing auseful part in the future of civilisation.

4.

This doctrine of the possibility of indefinitely moulding thecharacters of men by laws and institutions--whether combined or notwith a belief in the natural equality of men's faculties--laid afoundation on which the theory of the perfectibility of humanitycould be raised. It marked, therefore, an important stage in thedevelopment of the doctrine of Progress.

It gave, moreover, a new and larger content to that doctrine by itsapplicability, not only to the peoples which are at present in thevan of civilisation, but also to those which have lagged far behindand may appear irreclaimably barbarous--thus potentially includingall humanity in the prospect of the future. Turgot had alreadyconceived "the total mass of the human race moving always slowlyforward"; he had declared that the human mind everywhere containsthe germs of progress and that the inequality of peoples is due tothe infinite variety of their circumstances. This enlargingconception was calculated to add strength to the idea of Progress,by raising it to a synthesis comprehending not merely the westerncivilised nations but the whole human world.

Interest in the remote peoples of the earth, in the unfamiliarcivilisations of the East, in the untutored races of America andAfrica, was vivid in France in the eighteenth century. Everyoneknows how Voltaire and Montesquieu used Hurons or Persians to holdup the glass to Western manners and morals, as Tacitus used theGermans to criticise the society of Rome. But very few ever lookinto the seven volumes of the Abbe Raynal's History of the TwoIndies which appeared in 1772. It is however, one of the remarkablebooks of the century. Its immediate practical importance lay in thearray of facts which it furnished to the friends of humanity in themovement against negro slavery. But it was also an effective attackon the Church and the sacerdotal system. The author's method was thesame which his greater contemporary Gibbon employed on a largerscale. A history of facts was a more formidable indictment than anydeclamatory attack.

Raynal brought home to the conscience of Europeans the miserieswhich had befallen the natives of the New World through theChristian conquerors and their priests. He was not indeed anenthusiastic preacher of Progress. He is unable to decide betweenthe comparative advantages of the savage state of nature and themost highly cultivated society. But he observes that "the human raceis what we wish to make it," that the felicity of man dependsentirely on the improvement of legislation; and in the survey of thehistory of Europe to which the last Book of his work is devoted, hisview is generally optimistic. [Footnote: cp. Raynal, Histoire, vii.214, 256. This book was first published anonymously; the author'sname appeared in the edition of 1780.]

5.Baron d'Holbach had a more powerful brain than Helvetius, but hiswritings had probably less influence, though he was the spiritualfather of two prominent Revolutionaries, Hebert and Chaumette. HisSystem of Nature (1770) develops a purely naturalistic theory of theuniverse, in which the prevalent Deism is rejected: there is no God;material Nature stands out alone, self-sufficing, dominis privatasuperbis. The book suggests how the Lucretian theory of developmentmight have led to the idea of Progress. But it sent a chilly shockto the hearts of many and probably convinced few. The effective partwas the outspoken and passionate indictment of governments andreligions as causes of most of the miseries of mankind.

It is in other works, especially in his Social System, that hisviews of Progress are to be sought. Man is simply a part of nature;he has no privileged position, and he is born neither good nor bad.Erras, as Seneca said, si existumas vitia nobiscum esse:supervenerunt, ingesta sunt. [Footnote: Seneca, Ep. 124.] We aremade good or bad by education, public opinion, laws, government; andhere the author points to the significance of the instinct ofimitation as a social force, which a modern writer, M. Tarde, hasworked into a system.

The evils, which are due to the errors of tyranny and superstition,the force of truth will gradually diminish if it cannot completelybanish them; for our governments and laws may be perfected by theprogress of useful knowledge. But the process will be a long one:centuries of continuous mental effort in unravelling the causes ofsocial ill-being and repeated experiments to determine the remedies(des experiences reiterees de la societe). In any case we cannotlook forward to the attainment of an unchangeable or unqualifiedfelicity. That is a mere chimera "incompatible with the nature of abeing whose feeble machine is subject to derangement and whoseardent imagination will not always submit to the guidance of reason.Sometimes to enjoy, sometimes to suffer, is the lot of man; to enjoymore often than to suffer is what constitutes well-being."

D'Holbach was a strict determinist; he left no room for freewill inthe rigorous succession of cause and effect, and the pages in whichhe drives home the theory of causal necessity are still worthreading. From his naturalistic principles he inferred that thedistinction between nature and art is not fundamental; civilisationis as rational as the savage state. Here he was at one withAristotle.

All the successive inventions of the human mind to change or perfectman's mode of existence and render it happier were only thenecessary consequence of his essence and that of the existenceswhich act upon him. All we do or think, all we are or shall be, isonly an effect of what universal nature has made us. Art is onlynature acting by the aid of the instruments which she has fashioned.[Footnote: The passages of d'Holbach specially referred to are:Systeme social, i. 1, p. 13; Syst. de la nature, i. 6, p. 88; Syst.soc. i. 15, p. 271; Syst. de la n. i. 1, p. 3.]

Progress, therefore, is natural and necessary, and to criticise orcondemn it by appealing to nature is only to divide the house ofnature against itself.

If d'Holbach had pressed his logic further, he would have taken amore indulgent and calmer view of the past history of mankind. Hewould have acknowledged that institutions and opinions to whichmodern reason may give short shrift were natural and useful in theirday, and would have recognised that at any stage of history theheritage of the past is no less necessary to progress than thesolvent power of new ideas. Most thinkers of his time were inclinedto judge the past career of humanity anachronistically. All thethings that had been done or thought which could not be justified inthe new age of enlightenment, were regarded as gratuitous andinexcusable errors. The traditions, superstitions, and customs, thewhole "code of fraud and woe" transmitted from the past, weighedthen too heavily in France to allow the school of reform to doimpartial justice to their origins. They felt a sort of resentmentagainst history. D'Alembert said that it would be well if historycould be destroyed; and the general tendency was to ignore thesocial memory and the common heritage of past experiences whichmould a human society and make it something very different from amere collection of individuals.

Belief in Progress, however, took no extravagant form. It did notbeguile d'Holbach or any other of the leading thinkers of theEncyclopaedia epoch into optimistic dreams of the future which mightawait mankind. They had a much clearer conception of obstacles thanthe good Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Helvetius agrees with d'Holbach thatprogress will be slow, and Diderot is wavering and sceptical of thequestion of indefinite social improvement. [Footnote: De l'esprit,Disc. ii. cc. 24, 25.]

6.

The reformers of the Encyclopaedia group were not alone indisseminating the idea of Progress. Another group of thinkers, whowidely differed in their principles, though some of them hadcontributed articles to the Encyclopaedia, [Footnote: Quesnay andTurgot, who, though not professedly a Physiocrat, held the sameviews as the sect.] also did much to make it a power. The rise ofthe special study of Economics was one of the most significant factsin the general trend of thought towards the analysis ofcivilisation. Economical students found that in seeking to discovera true theory of the production, distribution, and employment ofwealth, they could not avoid the consideration of the constitutionand purpose of society. The problems of production and distributioncould not be divorced from political theory: production raises thequestion of the functions of government and the limits of itsintervention in trade and industry; distribution involve questionsof property, justice, and equality. The employment of riches leadsinto the domain of morals.

The French Economists or "Physiocrats," as they were afterwardscalled, who formed a definite school before 1760--Quesnay themaster, Mirabeau, Mercier de la Riviere, and the rest--envisagedtheir special subject from a wide philosophical point of view; theirgeneral economic theory was equivalent to a theory of human society.They laid down the doctrine of a Natural Order in politicalcommunities, and from it they deduced their economic teaching.

They assumed, like the Encyclopaedists, that the end of society isthe attainment of terrestrial happiness by its members, and thatthis is the sole purpose of government. The object of a treatise byMercier de la Riviere [Footnote: L'ordre naturel et essentiel dessocietes politiqes, 1767.] (a convenient exposition of the views ofthe sect) is, in his own words, to discover the natural order forthe government of men living in organised communities, which willassure to them temporal felicity: an order in which everything iswell, necessarily well, and in which the interests of all are soperfectly and intimately consolidated that all are happy, from theruler to the least of his subjects.

But in what does this happiness consist? His answer is that "humanlyspeaking, the greatest happiness possible for us consists in thegreatest possible abundance of objects suitable to our enjoyment andin the greatest liberty to profit by them." And liberty is necessarynot only to enjoy them but also to produce them in the greatestabundance, since liberty stimulates human efforts. Another conditionof abundance is the multiplication of the race; in fact, thehappiness of men and their numbers are closely bound up together inthe system of nature. From these axioms may be deduced the NaturalOrder of a human society, the reciprocal duties and rights whoseenforcement is required for the greatest possible multiplication ofproducts, in order to procure to the race the greatest sum ofhappiness with the maximum population.

Now, individual property is the indispensable condition for fullenjoyment of the products of human labour; "property is the measureof liberty, and liberty is the measure of property." Hence, torealise general happiness it is only necessary to maintain propertyand consequently liberty in all their natural extent. The fatalerror which has made history what it is has been the failure torecognise this simple fact; for aggression and conquest, the causesof human miseries, violate the law of property which is thefoundation of happiness.

The practical inference was that the chief function of governmentwas to protect property and that complete freedom should be left toprivate enterprise to exploit the resources of the earth. All wouldbe well if trade and industry were allowed to follow their naturaltendencies. This is what was meant by Physiocracy, the supremacy ofthe Natural Order. If rulers observed the limits of their truefunctions, Mercier thought that the moral effect would be immense."The public system of government is the true education of moral man.Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis." [Footnote: Theparticulars of the Physiocratic doctrine as to the relative valuesof agriculture and commerce which Adam Smith was soon to criticisedo not concern us; nor is it necessary to repeat the obviouscriticisms on a theory which virtually reduced the science ofsociety to a science of production and distribution.]

While they advocated a thorough reform of the principles which ruledthe fiscal policy of governments, the Economists were not idealists,like the Encyclopaedic philosophers; they sowed no seeds ofrevolution. Their starting-point was that which is, not that whichought to be. And, apart from their narrower point of view, theydiffered from the philosophers in two very important points. Theydid not believe that society was of human institution, and thereforethey did not believe that there could be any deductive science ofsociety based simply on man's nature. Moreover, they held thatinequality of condition was one of its immutable features, immutablebecause it is a consequence of the inequality of physical powers.

But they believed in the future progress of society towards a stateof happiness through the increase of opulence which would itselfdepend on the growth of justice and "liberty"; and they insisted onthe importance of the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Theirinfluence in promoting a belief in Progress is vouched for byCondorcet, the friend and biographer of Turgot. As Turgot standsapart from the Physiocrats (with whom indeed he did not identifyhimself) by his wider views on civilisation, it might be suspectedthat it is of him that Condorcet was chiefly thinking. Yet we neednot limit the scope of his statement when we remember that as a sectthe Economists assumed as their first principle the eudaemonic valueof civilisation, declared that temporal happiness is attainable, andthrew all their weight into the scales against the doctrine ofRegress which had found a powerful advocate in Rousseau.

7.

By liberty the Economists meant economic liberty. Neither they northe philosophers nor Rousseau, the father of modern democracy, hadany just conception of what political liberty means. Theycontributed much to its realisation, but their own ideas of it werenarrow and imperfect. They never challenged the principle of adespotic government, they only contended that the despotism must beenlightened. The paternal rule of a Joseph or a Catherine, actingunder the advice of philosophers, seemed to them the ideal solutionof the problem of government; and when the progressive anddisinterested Turgot, whom they might regard as one of themselves,was appointed financial minister on the accession of Louis XVI., itseemed that their ideal was about to be realised. His speedy falldispelled their hopes, but did not teach them the secret of liberty.They had no quarrel with the principle of the censorship, thoughthey writhed under its tyranny; they did not want to abolish it.They only complained that it was used against reason and light, thatis against their own writings; and, if the Conseil d'Etat or theParlement had suppressed the works of their obscurantist opponents,they would have congratulated themselves that the world was marchingquickly towards perfection. [Footnote: The principle thatintolerance on the part of the wise and strong towards the ignorantand weak is a good thing is not alien to the spirit of the Frenchphilosophers, though I do not think any of them expressly assertedit. In the following century it was formulated by Colins, a Belgian(author of two works on social science, 1857-60), who believed thatan autocratic government suppressing liberty of conscience is themost effective instrument of Progress. It is possible that democracymay yet try the experiment.]

CHAPTER IX

WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX

1.

The optimistic theory of civilisation was not unchallenged byrationalists. In the same year (1750) in which Turgot traced anoutline of historical Progress at the Sorbonne, Rousseau laid beforethe Academy of Dijon a theory of historical Regress. This Academyhad offered a prize for the best essay on the question whether therevival of sciences and arts had contributed to the improvement ofmorals. The prize was awarded to Rousseau. Five years later the samelearned body proposed another subject for investigation, the originof Inequality among men. Rousseau again competed but failed to winthe prize, though this second essay was a far more remarkableperformance.

The view common to these two discourses, that social development hasbeen a gigantic mistake, that the farther man has travelled from aprimitive simple state the more unhappy has his lot become, thatcivilisation is radically vicious, was not original. Essentially thesame issue had been raised in England, though in a different form,by Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, the scandalous book which aimedat proving that it is not the virtues and amiable qualities of manthat are the cement of civilised society, but the vices of itsmembers which are the support of all trades and employments.[Footnote: The expanded edition was published in 1723.] In thesevices, he said, "we must look for the true origin of all arts andsciences"; "the moment evil ceases the society must be spoiled, ifnot totally dissolved."

The significance of Mandeville's book lay in the challenge it flungto the optimistic doctrines of Lord Shaftesbury, that human natureis good and all is for the best in this harmonious world. "The ideashe had formed," wrote Mandeville, "of the goodness and excellency ofour nature were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful andamiable; he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never bereconciled together, innocence of manners and worldly greatness."

Of these two views Rousseau accepted one and rejected the other. Heagreed with Shaftesbury as to the natural goodness of man; he agreedwith Mandeville that innocence of manners is incompatible with theconditions of a civilised society. He was an optimist in regard tohuman nature, a pessimist in regard to civilisation.

In his first Discourse he begins by appreciating the specioussplendour of modern enlightenment, the voyages of man's intellectamong the stars, and then goes on to assever that in the first placemen have lost, through their civilisation, the original liberty forwhich they were born, and that arts and science, flinging garlandsof flowers on the iron chains which bind them, make them love theirslavery; and secondly that there is a real depravity beneath thefair semblance and "our souls are corrupted as our sciences and artsadvance to perfection." Nor is this only a modern phenomenon; "theevils due to our vain curiosity are as old as the world." For it isa law of history that morals fall and rise in correspondence withthe progress and decline of the arts and sciences as regularly asthe tides answer to the phases of the moon. This "law" isexemplified by the fortunes of Greece, Rome, and China, to whosecivilisations the author opposes the comparative happiness of theignorant Persians, Scythians, and ancient Germans. "Luxury,dissoluteness, and slavery have been always the chastisement of theambitious efforts we have made to emerge from the happy ignorance inwhich the Eternal Wisdom had placed us." There is the theologicaldoctrine of the tree of Eden in a new shape.

Rousseau's attempt to show that the cultivation of science producesspecific moral evils is feeble, and has little ingenuity; it is adeclamation rather than an argument; and in the end he makesconcessions which undo the effect of his impeachment. The essay didnot establish even a plausible case, but it was paradoxical andsuggestive, and attracted more attention than Turgot's thoughtfuldiscourse in the Sorbonne. D'Alembert deemed it worthy of acourteous expression of dissent; [Footnote: In the Disc. Prel. tothe Encyclopaedia.] and Voltaire satirised it in his Timon.

2.

In the Discourse on Inequality Rousseau dealt more directly with theeffect of civilisation on happiness. He proposed to explain how itcame about that right overcame the primitive reign of might, thatthe strong were induced to serve the weak, and the people topurchase a fancied tranquillity at the price of a real felicity. Sohe stated his problem; and to solve it he had to consider the "stateof nature" which Hobbes had conceived as a state of war and Locke asa state of peace. Rousseau imagines our first savage ancestorsliving in isolation, wandering in the forests, occasionally co-operating, and differing from the animals only by the possession ofa faculty for improving themselves (la faculte de se perfectionner).After a stage in which families lived alone in a more or lesssettled condition, came the formation of groups of families, livingtogether in a definite territory, united by a common mode of lifeand sustenance, and by the common influence of climate, but withoutlaws or government or any social organisation.

It is this state, which was reached only after a long period, notthe original state of nature, that Rousseau considers to have beenthe happiest period of the human race.

This period of the development of human faculties, holding a justmean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulantactivity of our self-love, must be the happiest and most durableepoch. The more we reflect on it, the more we find that this statewas the least exposed to revolutions and the best for man; and thathe can have left it only through some fatal chance which, for thecommon advantage, should never have occurred. The example of thesavages who have almost all been found in this state seems to bearout the conclusion that humanity was made to remain in it for ever,that it was the true youth of the world, and that all furtherprogresses have been so many steps, apparently towards theperfection of the individual, and really towards the decrepitude ofthe species.

He ascribes to metallurgy and agriculture the fatal resolution whichbrought this Arcadian existence to an end. Agriculture entailed theorigin of property in land. Moral and social inequality wereintroduced by the man who first enclosed a piece of land and said,This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him. He wasthe founder of civil society.

The general argument amounts to this: Man's faculty of improvinghimself is the source of his other faculties, including hissociability, and has been fatal to his happiness. The circumstancesof his primeval life favoured the growth of this faculty, and inmaking man sociable they made him wicked; they developed the reasonof the individual and thereby caused the species to deteriorate. Ifthe process had stopped at a certain point, all would have beenwell; but man's capacities, stimulated by fortuitous circumstances,urged him onward, and leaving behind him the peaceful Arcadia wherehe should have remained safe and content, he set out on the fatalroad which led to the calamities of civilisation. We need not followRousseau in his description of those calamities which he attributesto wealth and the artificial conditions of society. His indictmentwas too general and rhetorical to make much impression. In truth, amore powerful and comprehensive case against civilised society wasdrawn up about the same time, though with a very different motive,by one whose thought represented all that was opposed to Rousseau'steaching. Burke's early work, A Vindication of Natural Society,[Footnote: A.D. 1756.] was written to show that all the objectionswhich Deists like Bolingbroke urged against artificial religioncould be brought with greater force against artificial society, andhe worked out in detail a historical picture of the evils ofcivilisation which is far more telling than Rousseau's generalities.[Footnote: In his admirable edition of The Political Writings ofJean-Jacques Rousseau (1915), p. 89, Vaughan suggests that inRousseau's later works we may possibly detect "the first faintbeginnings" of a belief in Progress, and attributes this to theinfluence of Montesquieu.]

3.

If civilisation has been the curse of man, it might seem that thelogical course for Rousseau to recommend was its destruction. Thiswas the inference which Voltaire drew in Timon, to laugh the wholetheory out of court. But Rousseau did not suggest a movement todestroy all the libraries and all the works of art in the world, toput to death or silence all the savants, to pull down the cities,and burn the ships. He was not a mere dreamer, and his Arcadia wasno more than a Utopian ideal, by the light of which he conceivedthat the society of his own day might be corrected and transformed.He attached his hopes to equality, democracy, and a radical changein education.

Equality: this revolutionary idea was of course quite compatiblewith the theory of Progress, and was soon to be closely associatedwith it. But it is easy to understand that the two ideas shouldfirst have appeared in antagonism to each other. The advance ofknowledge and the increase of man's power over nature had virtuallyprofited only a minority. When Fontenelle or Voltaire vaunted theillumination of their age and glorified the modern revolution inscientific thought, they took account only of a small class ofprivileged people. Higher education, Voltaire observed, is not forcobblers or kitchenmaids; "on n'a jamais pretendu eclairer lescordonniers et les servantes." The theory of Progress had so farleft the masses out of account. Rousseau contrasted the splendour ofthe French court, the luxury of the opulent, the enlightenment ofthose who had the opportunity of education, with the hard lot of theignorant mass of peasants, whose toil paid for the luxury of many ofthe idle enlightened people who amused themselves at Paris. Thehorror of this contrast, which left Voltaire cold, was the poignantmotive which inspired Rousseau, a man of the people, in constructinghis new doctrine. The existing inequality seemed an injustice whichrendered the self-complacency of the age revolting. If this is theresult of progressive civilisation, what is progress worth? The nextstep is to declare that civilisation is the causa malorum and thatwhat is named progress is really regress. But Rousseau found a wayof circumventing pessimism. He asked himself, cannot equality berealised in an organised state, founded on natural right? The SocialContract was his answer, and there we can see the living idea ofequality detaching itself from the dead theory of degradation.[Footnote: The consistency of the Social Contract with the Discourseon Inequality has been much debated. They deal with two distinctproblems, and the Social Contract does not mark any change in theauthor's views. Though it was not published till 1762 he had beenworking at it since 1753.]

Arcadianism, which was thus only a side-issue for Rousseau, was theextreme expression of tendencies which appear in the speculations ofother thinkers of the day. Morelly and Mably argued in favour of areversion to simpler forms of life. They contemplated the foundationof socialistic communities by reviving institutions and practiceswhich belonged to a past period of social evolution. Mably, inspiredby Plato, thought it possible by legislation to construct a state ofantique pattern. [Footnote: For Mably's political doctrines seeGuerrier's monograph, L'Abbe de Mably (1886), where it is shown thatamong "the theories which determined in advance the course of theevents of 1789" the Abbe's played a role which has not been dulyrecognised.] They ascribed evils of civilisation to inequalityarising from the existence of private property, but Morelly rejectedthe view of the "bold sophist" Rousseau that science and art were toblame. He thought that aided by science and learning man might reacha state based on communism, resembling the state of nature but moreperfect, and he planned an ideal constitution in his romance of theFloating Islands. [Footnote: Naufrage des isles flottantes ouBasiliade du celebre Pilpai (1753). It begins: "je chante le regneaimable de la Verite et de la Nature." Morelly's other work, Code dela Nature, appeared in 1755.] Different as these views were, theyrepresent the idea of regress; they imply a condemnation of thetendencies of actual social development and recommend a return tosimpler and more primitive conditions.

Even Diderot, though he had little sympathy with Utopianspeculations, was attracted by the idea of the simplification ofsociety, and met Rousseau so far as to declare that the happieststate was a mean between savage and civilised life.

"I am convinced," he wrote, "that the industry of man has gone toofar and that if it had stopped long ago and if it were possible tosimplify the results, we should not be the worse. I believe there isa limit in civilisation, a limit more conformable to the felicity ofman in general and far less distant from the savage state than isimagined; but how to return to it, having left it, or how to remainin it, if we were there? I know not." [Footnote: Refutation del'ouvrage d'Helvetius in OEuvres ii. p. 431. Elsewhere (p. 287) heargues that in a community without arts and industries there arefewer crimes than in a civilised state, but men are not so happy.]

His picture of the savages of Tahiti in the Supplement au voyage deBougainville was not seriously meant, but it illustrates the factthat in certain moods he felt the fascination of Rousseau's Arcadia.

D'Holbach met all these theories by pointing out that humandevelopment, from the "state of nature" to social life and the ideasand commodities of civilisation, is itself natural, given the innatetendency of man to improve his lot. To return to the simpler life ofthe forests--or to any bygone stage--would be denaturer l'homme, itwould be contrary to nature; and if he could do so, it would only beto recommence the career begun by his ancestors and pass againthrough the same successive phases of history. [Footnote: Syst. soc.i. 16, p. 190.]

There was, indeed, one question which caused some embarrassment tobelievers in Progress. The increase of wealth and luxury wasevidently a salient feature in modern progressive states; and it wasclear that there was an intimate connection between the growth ofknowledge and the growth of commerce and industrial arts, and thatthe natural progress of these meant an ever-increasing accumulationof riches and the practice of more refined luxury. The question,therefore, whether luxury is injurious to the general happinessoccupied the attention of the philosophers. [Footnote: D'Holbach,ib. iii. 7; Diderot, art. Luxe in the Encylopaedia; Helvetius, Del'esprit, i. 3.] If it is injurious, does it not follow that theforces on which admittedly Progress depends are leading in anundesirable direction? Should they be obstructed, or is it wiser tolet things follow their natural tendency (laisser aller les chosessuivant leur pente naturelle)? Voltaire accepted wealth with all itsconsequences. D'Holbach proved to his satisfaction that luxuryalways led to the ruin of nations. Diderot and Helvetius arrayed thearguments which could be urged on both sides. Perhaps the mostreasonable contribution to the subject was an essay of Hume.

4.

It is obvious that Rousseau and all other theorists of Regress wouldbe definitely refuted if it could be proved by an historicalinvestigation that in no period in the past had man's lot beenhappier than in the present. Such an inquiry was undertaken by theChevalier de Chastellux. His book On Public Felicity, orConsiderations on the lot of Men in the various Epochs of History,appeared in 1772 and had a wide circulation. [Footnote: There was anew edition in 1776 with an important additional chapter.] It is asurvey of the history of the western world and aims at proving thecertainty of future Progress. It betrays the influence both of theEncyclopaedists and of the Economists. Chastellux is convinced thathuman nature can be indefinitely moulded by institutions; thatenlightenment is a necessary condition of general happiness; thatwar and superstition, for which governments and priests areresponsible, are the principal obstacles.

But he attempted to do what none of his masters had done, to testthe question methodically from the data of history. Turgot, andVoltaire in his way, had traced the growth of civilisation; theoriginality of Chastellux lay in concentrating attention on theeudaemonic issue, in examining each historical period for thepurpose of discovering whether people on the whole were happy andenviable. Has there ever been a time, he inquired, in which publicfelicity was greater than in our own, in which it would have beendesirable to remain for ever, and to which it would now be desirableto return?

He begins by brushing away the hypothesis of an Arcadia. We knowreally nothing about primitive man, there is not sufficient evidenceto authorise conjectures. We know man only as he has existed inorganised societies, and if we are to condemn modern civilisationand its prospects, we must find our term of comparison not in animaginary golden age but in a known historical epoch. And we must becareful not to fall into the mistakes of confusing public prosperitywith general happiness, and of considering only the duration oraggrandisement of empires and ignoring the lot of the common people.

His survey of history is summary and superficial enough. He givesreasons for believing that no peoples from the ancient Egyptians andAssyrians to the Europeans of the Renaissance can be judged happy.Yet what about the Greeks? Theirs was an age of enlightenment. In afew pages he examines their laws and history, and concludes, "We arecompelled to acknowledge that what is called the bel age of Greecewas a time of pain and torture for humanity." And in ancienthistory, generally, "slavery alone sufficed to make man's conditiona hundred times worse than it is at present." The miseries of lifein the Roman period are even more apparent than in the Greek. WhatEnglishman or Frenchman would tolerate life as lived in ancientRome? It is interesting to remember that four years later anEnglishman who had an incomparably wider and deeper knowledge ofhistory declared it to be probable that in the age of the Antoninescivilised Europe enjoyed greater happiness than at any other period.

Rome declined and Christianity came. Its purpose was not to rendermen happy on earth, and we do not find that it made rulers lessavaricious or less sanguinary, peoples more patient or quiet, crimesrarer, punishments less cruel, treaties more faithfully observed, orwars waged more humanely. The conclusion is that it is only thosewho are profoundly ignorant of the past who can regret "the good oldtimes."

Throughout this survey Chastellux does not, like Turgot, make anyattempt to show that the race was progressing, however slowly. Onthe contrary, he sets the beginning of continuous Progress in theRenaissance--here agreeing with d'Alembert and Voltaire. Theintellectual movement, which originated then and resulted in theenlightenment of his own day, was a condition of social progress.But alone it would not have been enough, as is proved by the factthat the intellectual brilliancy of the great age of Greece exertedno beneficent effects on the well-being of the people. Nor indeedwas there any perceptible improvement in the prospect of happinessfor the people at large during the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, notwithstanding the progress of science and the arts. Butthe terrible wars of this period exhausted Europe, and thisfinancial exhaustion has supplied the requisite conditions forattaining a measure of felicity never realised in the past.

Peace is an advantageous condition for the progress of reason, butespecially when it is the result of the exhaustion of peoples andtheir satiety of fighting. Frivolous ideas disappear; politicalbodies, like organisms, have the care of self-preservation impressedupon them by pain; the human mind, hitherto exercised on agreeableobjects, falls back with more energy on useful objects; a moresuccessful appeal can be made to the rights of humanity; andprinces, who have become creditors and debtors of their subjects,permit them to be happy in order that they may be more solvent ormore patient.

This is not very lucid or convincing; but the main point is thatintellectual enlightenment would be ineffective without the co-operation of political events, and no political events wouldpermanently help humanity without the progress of knowledge.

Public felicity consists--Chastellux follows the Economists--inexternal and domestic peace, abundance and liberty, the liberty oftranquil enjoyment of one's own; and ordinary signs of it areflourishing agriculture, large populations, and the growth of tradeand industry. He is at pains to show the superiority of modern toancient agriculture, and he avails himself of the researches of Humeto prove the comparatively greater populousness of modern Europeancountries. As for the prospect of peace, he takes a curiouslyoptimistic view. A system of alliances has made Europe a sort ofconfederated republic, and the balance of power has rendered thedesign of a universal monarchy, such as that which Louis XIV.essayed, a chimera. [Footnote: So Rivarol, writing in 1783 (OEuvres,i. pp. 4 and 52): "Never did the world offer such a spectacle.Europe has reached such a high degree of power that history hasnothing to compare with it. It is virtually a federative republic,composed of empires and kingdoms, and the most powerful that hasever existed."] All the powerful nations are burdened with debt.War, too, is a much more difficult enterprise than it used to be;every campaign of the king of Prussia has been more arduous than allthe conquests of Attila. It looks as if the Peace of 1762-3possessed elements of finality. The chief danger he discerns in theoverseas policy of the English--auri sacra fames. Divination of thiskind has never been happy; a greater thinker, Auguste Comte, was toventure on more dogmatic predictions of the cessation of wars, whichthe event was no less utterly to belie. As for equality among men,Chastellux admits its desirability, but observes that there ispretty much the same amount of happiness (le bonheur se compenseassez) in the different classes of society. "Courtiers and ministersare not happier than husbandmen and artisans." Inequalities anddisportions in the lots of individuals are not incompatible with apositive measure of felicity. They are inconveniences incident tothe perfectibility of the species, and they will be eliminated onlywhen Progress reaches its final term. The best that can be done toremedy them is to accelerate the Progress of the race which willconduct it one day to the greatest possible happiness; not torestore a state of ignorance and simplicity, from which it wouldagain escape.

The general argument of the book may be resumed briefly. Felicityhas never been realised in any period of the past. No government,however esteemed, set before itself to achieve what ought to be thesole object of government, "the greatest happiness of the greatestnumber of individuals." Now, for the first time in human history,intellectual enlightenment, other circumstances fortunatelyconcurring, has brought about a condition of things, in which thisobject can no longer be ignored, and there is a prospect that itwill gradually gain the ascendant. In the meantime, things haveimproved; the diffusion of knowledge is daily ameliorating men'slot, and far from envying any age in the past we ought to considerourselves much happier than the ancients.

We may wonder at this writer's easy confidence in applying thecriterion of happiness to different societies. Yet the difficulty ofsuch comparisons was, I believe, first pointed out by Comte.[Footnote: Cours de philosophie positive, iv. 379.] It isimpossible, he says, to compare two states of society and determinethat in one more happiness was enjoyed than in the other. Thehappiness of an individual requires a certain degree of harmonybetween his faculties and his environment. But there is always anatural tendency towards the establishment of such an equilibrium,and there is no means of discovering by argument or by directexperience the situation of a society in this respect. Therefore, heconcludes, the question of happiness must be eliminated from anyscientific treatment of civilisation.

Chastellux won a remarkable success. His work was highly praised byVoltaire, and was translated into English, Italian, and German. Itcondensed, on a single issue, the optimistic doctrines of thephilosophers, and appeared to give them a more solid historicalfoundation than Voltaire's Essay on Manners had supplied. Itprovided the optimists with new arguments against Rousseau, and musthave done much to spread and confirm faith in perfectibility.[Footnote: Soon after the publication of the book of Chastellux--though I do not suggest any direct connection--a society ofIlluminati, who also called themselves the Perfectibilists, wasfounded at Ingoldstadt, who proposed to effect a pacifictransformation of humanity. See Javary, De l'idee de progres, p.73.]

CHAPTER X

THE YEAR 2440

1.

The leaders of thought in France did not look far forward into thefuture or attempt to trace the definite lines on which the humanrace might be expected to develop. They contented themselves withprinciples and vague generalities, and they had no illusions as tothe slowness of the process of social amelioration; a rationalmorality, the condition of improvement, was only in its infancy. Apassage in a work of the Abbe Morellet probably reflects faithfullyenough the comfortable though not extravagant optimism which wascurrent. [Footnote: Reflexions sur les avantages d'ecrire etd'imprimer sur les matieres de l'administration (1764); in Melanges,vol. iii. p. 55. Morellet held, like d'Holbach, that society is onlythe development and improvement of nature itself (ib. p. 6).]

Let us hope for the amelioration of man's lot as a consequence ofthe progress of the enlightenment (des lumieres) and labours of theeducated (des gens instruits); let us trust that the errors and eventhe injustices of our age may not rob us of this consoling hope. Thehistory of society presents a continuous alternation of light anddarkness, reason and extravagance, humanity and barbarism; but inthe succession of ages we can observe good gradually increasing inever greater proportion. What educated man, if he is not amisanthrope or misled by vain declamations, would really wish he hadlived in the barbarous and poetical time which Homer paints in suchfair and terrifying colours? Who regrets that he was not born atSparta among those pretended heroes who made it a virtue to insultnature, practised theft, and gloried in the murder of a Helot; or atCarthage, the scene of human sacrifices, or at Rome amid theproscriptions or under the rule of a Nero or a Caligula? Let asagree that man advances, though slowly, towards light and happiness.

But though the most influential writers were sober in speculatingabout the future, it is significant of their effectiveness indiffusing the idea of Progress that now for the first time aprophetic Utopia was constructed. Hitherto, as I have beforeobserved, ideal states were either projected into the remote past orset in some distant, vaguely-known region, where fancy could buildfreely. To project them into the future was a new thing, and when in1770 Sebastien Mercier described what human civilisation would be inA.D. 2440, it was a telling sign of the power which the idea ofProgress was beginning to exercise.

2.

Mercier has been remembered, or rather forgotten, as an inferiordramatist. He was a good deal more, and the researches of M. Beclardinto his life and works enable us to appreciate him. If it is anoverstatement to say that his soul reflected in miniature the verysoul of his age, [Footnote: L. Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, sa vie,son oeuvre, son temps (1903), p. vii.] he was assuredly one of itscharacteristic products. He reminds us in some ways of the Abbe deSaint-Pierre, who was one of his heroes. All his activities wereurged by the dream of a humanity regenerated by reason, all hisenergy devoted to bringing about its accomplishment. Saint-Pierre'sidea of perpetual peace inspired an early essay on the scourge ofwar.

The theories of Rousseau exercised at first an irresistibleattraction, but modern civilisation had too strong a hold on him; hewas too Parisian in temper to acquiesce for long in the doctrine ofArcadianism. He composed a book on The Savage to illustrate the textthat the true standard of morality is the heart of primitive man,and to prove that the best thing we could do is to return to theforest; but in the process of writing it he seems to have come tothe conclusion that the whole doctrine was fallacious. [Footnote:Mercier's early essay: Des malheurs de la guerre et des avantages dela paix (1766). On the savage: L'homme sauvage (1767). For theopposite thesis see the Songes philosophiques (1768). He describes astate of perfect happiness in a planet where beings live inperpetual contemplation of the infinite. He appreciates the work ofphilosophers from Socrates to Leibnitz, and describes Rousseau asstanding before the swelling stream, but cursing it. It may besuspected that the writings of Leibnitz had much to do withMercier's conversion.] The transformation of his opinions was thework of a few months. He then came forward with the opposite thesisthat all events have been ordered for man's felicity, and he beganto work on an imaginary picture of the state to which man might findhis way within seven hundred years.

L'an 2440 was published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1770. [Footnote:The author's name first appeared in the 3rd ed., 1799. A Germantranslation, by C. F. Weisse, was published in London in 1772. TheEnglish version, by Dr. Hooper, appeared in the same year, and a newedition in 1802; the translator changed the title to Memoirs of theyear Two thousand five hundred.] Its circulation in France wasrigorously forbidden, because it implied a merciless criticism ofthe administration. It was reprinted in London and Neuchatel, andtranslated into English and German.

3.

As the motto of his prophetic vision Mercier takes the saying ofLeibnitz that "the present is pregnant of the future." Thus thephase of civilisation which he imagines is proposed as the outcomeof the natural and inevitable march of history. The world of A.D.2440 in which a man born in the eighteenth century who has slept anenchanted sleep awakes to find himself, is composed of nations wholive in a family concord rarely interrupted by war. But of the worldat large we hear little; the imagination of Mercier is concentratedon France, and particularly Paris. He is satisfied with knowing thatslavery has been abolished; that the rivalry of France and Englandhas been replaced by an indestructible alliance; that the Pope,whose authority is still august, has renounced his errors andreturned to the customs of the primitive Church; that French playsare performed in China. The changes in Paris are a sufficient indexof the general transformation.

The constitution of France is still monarchical. Its population hasincreased by one half; that of the capital remains about the same.Paris has been rebuilt on a scientific plan; its sanitaryarrangements have been brought to perfection; it is well lit; andevery provision has been made for the public safety. Privatehospitality is so large that inns have disappeared, but luxury attable is considered a revolting crime. Tea, coffee, and tobacco areno longer imported. [Footnote: In the first edition of the bookcommerce was abolished.] There is no system of credit; everything ispaid for in ready money, and this practice has led to a remarkablesimplicity in dress. Marriages are contracted only through mutualinclination; dowries have been abolished. Education is governed bythe ideas of Rousseau, and is directed, in a narrow spirit, to thepromotion of morality. Italian, German, English, and Spanish aretaught in schools, but the study of the classical languages hasdisappeared; Latin does not help a man to virtue. History too isneglected and discouraged, for it is "the disgrace of humanity,every page being crowded with crimes and follies." Theatres aregovernment institutions, and have become the public schools of civicduties and morality. [Footnote: In 1769 Mercier began to carry outhis programme of composing and adapting plays for instruction andedification. His theory of the true functions of the theatre heexplained in a special treatise, Du theatre ou Nouvel Essai surl'art dramatique (1773).]

The literary records of the past had been almost all deliberatelydestroyed by fire. It was found expedient to do away with uselessand pernicious books which only obscured truth or containedperpetual repetitions of the same thing. A small closet in thepublic library sufficed to hold the ancient books which werepermitted to escape the conflagration, and the majority of thesewere English. The writings of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre were placednext those of Fenelon. "His pen was weak, but his heart was sublime.Seven ages have given to his great and beautiful ideas a justmaturity. His contemporaries regarded him as a visionary; hisdreams, however, have become realities."

The importance of men of letters as a social force was a favouritetheme of Mercier, and in A.D. 2440 this will be duly recognised. Butthe State control which weighed upon them so heavily in 1770 is notto be entirely abolished. There is no preventive censorship tohinder publication, but there are censors. There are no fines orimprisonment, but there are admonitions. And if any one publishes abook defending principles which are considered dangerous, he isobliged to go about in a black mask.

There is a state religion, Deism. There is probably no one who doesnot believe in God. But if any atheist were discovered, he would beput through a course of experimental physics. If he remainedobdurate in his rejection of a "palpable and salutary truth," thenation would go into mourning and banish him from its borders.

Every one has to work, but labour no longer resembles slavery. Asthere are no monks, nor numerous domestics, nor useless valets, norwork-men employed on the production of childish luxuries, a fewdaily hours of labour are sufficient for the public wants. Censorsinquire into men's capacities, assign tasks to the unemployed, andif man be found fit for nothing but the consumption of food he isbanished from the city.

These are some of the leading features of the ideal future to whichMercier's imagination reached. He did not put it forward as a finalterm. Later ages, he said, will go further, for "where can theperfectibility of man stop, armed with geometry and the mechanicalarts and chemistry?" But in his scanty prophecies of what sciencemight effect he showed curiously little resource. The truth is thatthis had not much interest for him, and he did not see thatscientific discoveries might transmute social conditions. The worldof 2440, its intolerably docile and virtuous society, reflects twocapital weaknesses in the speculation of the Encyclopaedist period:a failure to allow for the strength of human passions and interests,and a deficient appreciation of the meaning of liberty. Much as thereformers acclaimed and fought for toleration, they did notgenerally comprehend the value of the principle. They did not seethat in a society organised and governed by Reason and Justicethemselves, the unreserved toleration of false opinions would be theonly palladium of progress; or that a doctrinaire State, composed ofperfectly virtuous and deferential people, would arrest developmentand stifle origiality, by its ungenial if mild tyranny. Mercier's isno exception to the rule that ideal societies are always repellent;and there are probably few who would not rather be set down inAthens in the days of the "vile" Aristophanes, whose works Merciercondemned to the flames, than in his Paris of 2440.

4.

That Bohemian man of letters, Restif de la Bretonne, whoseunedifying novels the Parisians of 2440 would assuredly haverejected from their libraries, published in 1790 a heroic comedyrepresenting how marriages would be arranged in "the year 2000," bywhich epoch he conceived that all social equalities would havedisappeared in a fraternal society and twenty nations be allied toFrance under the wise supremacy of "our well-beloved monarch LouisFrancois XXII." It was the Revolution that converted Restif to theconception of Progress, for hitherto his master had been Rousseau;but it can hardly be doubted that the motif and title of his playwere suggested by the romance of Mercier. L'an 2440 and L'an 2000are the first examples of the prophetic fiction which Mr. EdwardBellamy's Looking Backward was to popularise a hundred years later.

The Count de Volney's Ruins was another popular presentation of thehopes which the theory of Progress had awakened in France. Althoughthe work was not published till after the outbreak of theRevolution, [Footnote: Les Ruines des empires, 1789. An English